¹ Cf. N. Berdyaev, Slavery and Freedom, 1944; J. Fuchs SJ, “Das Gottesbild und die Moral innerweltlichen Handelns”, Stimmen der Zeit Bd.202, 6, Juni 1984, pp. 363-382; Theron, Stephen, “The bonum honestum and the Lack of Moral Motive in Aquinas's Ethical Theory”, The Downside Review, April 2000, pp. 85-111CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² J.H. Newman, A Grammar of Assent, 1870; Stephen Theron, Morals as Founded on Natural Law, P. Lang, Frankfurt 1987; Josef Seifert, “Gott und die Sittlichkeit innerweltlichen Handelns”, Forum Katholische Theologie, 1985, 1, pp. 27-48.

³ This was also the initial premise for C.S. Lewis's theism in his Mere Christianity (Book I, “Right and Wrong as a clue to the Meaning of the Universe”) London 1952 (but first printed in “Broadcast Talks, Geoffrey Bles, London 1942”). It is argued for more systematically in his set of lectures, The Abolition of Man, 1943, described by Cardinal Schörnborn as un brillant essai, in his “L'homme créé par Dieu: le fondement de la dignité de l'homme”, Gregorianum 1984, p. 353. One should add that Lewis in part anticipates our present solution when he has his diabolical protagonist in The Screwtape Letters say of the divinity, with some disapproval, that “He's a hedonist at heart.”

⁴ See our Natural Law Reconsidered, Peter Lang: Frankfurt 2002.

⁵ Cf. E. Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, New York 1940, pp. 325, 473. Gilson speaks of standing the old pagan philosophy of virtue on its head.

⁶ Seifert, art. cit., merely assumes their necessary existence, arguing that since “norms” cannot be derived from human nature according to contemporary teleological moralists they have to end up in arbitrary voluntarism (mit einer radikal voluntaristischen Auffassung enden, die die in Gott abgelehnte Willkürherrschaft auf den Menschen überträgt). But this is simply to fail to take seriously the new command of love, according to which absolute commands, only logically conceivable as divine as Anscombe saw (“Modern Moral Philosophy”, Philosophy 1958), have been replaced, in fulfilment of a divine dialectic, by a more enduring absolute which as energy, grace, life, is never more than analogously prescriptive.

⁷ Cf. H. McCabe OP, Law, Love and Language, London 1968.

⁸ The supposition leads to the contradictory assertion that there is no divine knowledge of particulars.

⁹ Cf. Stephen Theron, “Analogy and the Divine Being”, The Downside Review, April 1998, pp. 79-85.

¹⁰ As does Maritain in An Introduction to the Basic Problems of Moral Philosophy (Paris 1950, transl. Albany, NY, 1990), ch. 6, an espousal of the modern anti-ontological valuephilosophy in apparent contradiction of all this arch-Thomist's other work, at least on this point, and as such only equalled in facing both ways by some of Karol Wojtyla's utterances. They seem to have forgotten Marcel's remark about how such use of the idea of value is “the sign of a fundamental devaluation of reality itself” (Les hommes contre l'humain), a reproach one may also level at Dietrich von Hildebrand (Ethics 1953) and, as indicated above, his disciple Seifert. But for a contrasting but equally positive evaluation of children's experience see Stephen Theron, “On Being so Placed”, New Blackfriars, September 1980, pp. 378-385.

¹¹ Cf. M. Grabmann's comment on happiness as “höchste Entfaltung der Sittlichkeit”, Thomas von Aquin, München 1959.

¹² Cf. J. Walgrave OP, “Reason and Will in Natural Law”, Lex et libertas, Vatican City 1987 (Rolduc Symposium Acta), esp. pp. 74-75.

¹³ For an earlier attempt to defend human rights against such criticism see Stephen Theron, The Recovery of Purpose, Frankfurt 1993, ch. 8.

¹⁴ As was argued in our Morals as Founded on Natural Law (see note 1 above).

¹⁵ A. Donagan, The Theory of Morality, Chicago & London 1977.

¹⁶ R.M. Hare, Freedom and Reason, Oxford 1963.

¹⁷ Cf. Pope John Paul II (K. Wojtyla), Veritatis splendor 48-50.

¹⁸ A suspicion voiced by Seifert, Josef in “Esse, essence and Infinity: A Dialogue with Existentialist Thomism”, The New Scholasticism LVIII, Winter 1984, pp. 84-98CrossRefGoogle Scholar. But cf. Theron, Stephen, “Does Realism Make a Difference to Logic?” The Monist, April 1986, pp. 281-295, esp. p. 286CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁹ See Geach, P.T., “The Moral Law and the Law of God” in God and the Soul, London 1969Google Scholar. Lawrence Dewan OP states somewhere that an angel can see that what we experience as inclinations are, when healthy, in fact laws, prescriptive and forensic he seems to mean.

²⁰ Maritain's The Grace and Humanity of Jesus looks like an unsuccessful attempt to face up to these considerations, fatal for that Chalcedonian paradigm to which he remained committed.

²¹ Aquinas, Summa theol. Ia-IIae 21,1.

²² Summa theol. Ia-IIae 106, 3 ad 3um.

²³ A. de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1830.

²⁴ Much more than English of course. Zechariah the Jewish prophet spoke of a “spirit of kindness” being poured out upon people in consequence of some great divine act (Zechariah 12,10).

²⁵ To dismiss this play as “anti-Semitic” is utterly crass, as if Shylock were not balanced by Jessica, though even if he were not it should be obvious that the theme of the play cuts much deeper than incidental prejudices of time and place.

²⁶ I use the term, building upon Maritain's insight mentioned above (see his Christianity and Democracy, London 1945), as one heavy with analogical ramifications. The connection lies to hand, for example, of the rule of the people with the universal priesthood and kingship and prophethood of believers, of those who have received the new life or what is life indeed or truly.

²⁷ Cf. Comm. in II Cor. cap. 11.

²⁸ Cf. Maritain's “civilization of love” in True Humanism and other writings, from the aim of which he says we can only retreat (into a limited ideal of “civic friendship”) to the scandal of mankind.

²⁹ This is the positive element in the often absurd feeling among, for example, some Scandinavian socialists that it is immoral to plan your finances so as to minimize tax. They might approve this in a society with which they felt less identified, e.g. if they lived in Saddam's Iraq and felt they were being forced to finance germ warfare.